1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to flooring with floating support.
It relates more particularly to flooring made up of a set of touching parallel floorboards which are supported by a set of mutually parallel load-spreading plates that are themselves laid on the ground via a resilient underlayer on which they rest.
2. Description of the Related Art
The type of flooring that includes touching parallel floorboards supported by a set of mutually parallel load-spreading plates that are themselves laid on the ground via a resilient underlayer on which they rest is well known.
Traditionally, two major categories of flooring made in this way are distinguished.
A first category referred to as “solid” flooring comprises individual narrow floorboards or planks of solid wood.
The other category, referred to as “multi-ply” flooring, is made up of floorboards of greater width having a multilayer structure. More precisely, such a floorboard comprises on top a sheet of high quality wood bonded to a central core of plywood or ordinary wood, in turn bonded to a baseplate of ordinary wood.
Solid flooring is laid on battens disposed transversely relative to the direction in which the floorboards extend.
Multi-ply flooring is sometimes laid on plates of width considerably greater than that of the battens, said plates being oriented at 45°, or substantially 45°, relative to the longitudinal direction of the floorboards.
The function of the plates is to absorb the loads to which the flooring is subjected in use by spreading them out so as to avoid breaking the tongues that provide bonding between adjacent floorboards.
This problem of tongues being stressed and broken is clearly greater with multi-ply floorboards since they are generally of a width that is some multiple of the width of a solid floorboard, thereby multiplying in proportion the torque which the tongue must be capable of withstanding.
Flooring made in this way is laid on the load-spreading plates without adhesive (in floating manner).
In certain applications, in particular when making floors for sporting activities, the plates are placed on the ground, not directly, but with a resilient underlayer being interposed, e.g. made of synthetic felt or foam.
This provides flooring that is flexible and elastic, and particularly suitable for playing certain sports such as handball or basketball, for example.
Due to variations in the humidity of the ambient air, this kind of flooring is subjected to cyclical phenomena of expansion and contraction of its area, and in the long run that can give rise to breaks in the interfitting tongue and groove systems, and/or can lead to undesirable gaps appearing between adjacent floorboards.
This problem is associated with a poor distribution of internal tensions which, for large areas of flooring, can lead to the above-mentioned difficulties.